Ing. Helm, A.J.C. van der

Aadjan van der Helm is a lecturer of Interaction Design at the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering. His educational activities are organising and teaching courses on Interaction Design. Key elements in his teaching are embodied interaction, experiential prototyping and interactive environments. His research activities include  transforming technology into a design material and developing course formats for interaction design.

Academic Background

Before starting to work at the Industrial Design Engineering Faculty in 2000, Aadjan van der Helm held a postion at the Computer Graphics group at the Electrical Engineering, Mathematics & Computer Science Faculty. There he was involved in system administration, teaching programming and developing software for visualisation algorithms. During this period he obtained Computer Science BSc degree (1993 at the Haagse Hogeshool). He left the TUDelft in 1998 to work for a media art production lab (V2_Lab in Rotterdam), producing interactive media art installations for international exhibitions throughout Europe. In 2000 he returned to the TUDelft at the IDE Faculty to join a design research community called idStudioLab. Since then he was involved in making prototypes for research, coordinating and teaching interaction design courses and as a community manager of the idStudioLab.

Education

• BSc Computer Science, HBO Den Haag 

Experience

I have worked for the Computer Graphics group in the Faculty of Computer Science from 1988-1998. I worked as a systems manager, coach for computer graphics programming courses and as a scientific programmer in various projects. Between 1998 and 2000 I left the university to start V2_Lab – a production platform for interactive media art. In 2000 I returned in Delft in the IDStudiolab of the Faculty of Industrial Design. Here I still work in design education, design research and coordination of the IDStudiolab daily operation. 

Specialisation / field of research

I’m technically inclined. My contribution lies in how to involve computer technology effectively in the design process. Making sure it does not obstruct creativity, mainly in the conceptual stages of the design process. I am interested in all approaches to make technology sufficiently designer friendly and to educate designers to enable them to work with technology in the early stages of the design process.

Lectures and/or coaches students on:

• Bachelor:
  Minor Interactive Environments, Bachelor End Project, Interaction & Electronics
• Master Design for Interaction:
  Interactive Technology Design, Exploring Interactions, Graduation Projects 

Involved in the research project(s):